On Nightmares and The Importance of Hot Chocolate
by DeliriousMess
Summary: Duke hears Jennifer rummaging through his kitchen at two in the morning, trying to make hot chocolate after a nightmare. Some hint towards the canon show, but most of it is just trying to work through some headcanons. Genres were selected based on how close I thought they were to what was going on in the story. Comments are appreciated! EDIT: My timeline's a mess but I'm trying


Duke woke up to the sound of someone rummaging through the cabinets in his kitchen, followed by a panicked voice attempting to shush the items, and then a loud crash as something metal fell to the floor.

"Seriously?" a familiar, albeit exasperated, voice half-whispered.

Duke let out a breathy laugh, rubbing his eyes, before letting out another breath to lessen the tension that had sprung up from the initial sound. He let go of the grip of the gun under his pillow and looked at the clock on his phone to determine what sleep he had managed to get only to sigh. It was two in the morning, meaning he'd been asleep for about five minutes.

If his math was right.

He rubbed his face again as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed, grabbing a shirt and an elastic band to keep the hair out of his face. He crossed his room to his door, kicking random articles of clothing to the side as he went, and gathering his hair into a ponytail. He heard more panicked whispering on the other side, along with more metal-on-floor crashing. When he opened his door, he didn't see Jennifer, but he could still hear her cursing to herself as she rummaged through a cabinet.

He stood just to the side of the counter and looked down at her. She was crouching on the floor with her weight balanced on the balls of her feet in front of the cabinet, making her even smaller than usual. Her hair was slightly rumpled, her curls brushed out and more relaxed around her face, and she was wearing an old, dark purple, university t-shirt and a pair of dark gray sweatpants. Her eyes were slightly puffy from sleeping.

"…stupid things, I just wanted to make some hot chocolate with milk, and instead, he's going to think I'm rummaging through his cabinets trying to find something I shouldn't _be_ finding." she paused, running her fingers through her hair and sighing as she entwined her fingers at the back of her neck. She glared at a small saucepan next to her, "And _you_—,"

"What'cha doin' there, Short Stack?" he interrupted, smirking at her.

To her credit she didn't jump, she just closed her eyes really tightly and remained crouching on the floor.

"Jennifer?" he tried again. She only squeezed her eyes closed tighter, even scrunching her nose with it.

"You realize that I'm not a dinosaur, right? My eye sight is not based on movement." He was smiling, barely containing his chuckle.

"I'm trying really hard to will myself back to my room, since this is exactly what I was trying to avoid." She replied, letting her left eye to pop open and look around her and then finally up at him, opening her other eye. She sighed, "I don't really know what I was expecting."

"Right. So. Wanna tell me what you were doing?" Duke asked, leaning on to the counter and looking down at her.

She shrugged as she started replacing the various pots and pans scattered around her, and pointedly avoided his gaze, "Oh, you know, just pulling out every single piece of cookware you happen to own at two in the morning just to strike up a conversation. Have you heard about Pluto? That's messed up, right?"

"Uh-huh." He replied, arching an eyebrow at her.

"Yeah, it's not considered a planet anymore, which is unfortunate since it was named after the Roman God of the Underworld. That can't have positive implications for us. But I suppose that it does pose a rather interesting philosophical question about the nature of gods and humans in relation to—,"

"Wow, you're really going to run with that line of thought, aren't you." Duke chuckled, interrupting her.

She sighed, "I was just trying to grab this—," she grabbed the small saucepan that she had earlier been glaring at pointedly and held it over her head for him to see. He took it from her and set it on the counter in front of him as she finished cramming what pots and pans she hadn't yet back into the cabinet, "—so that I could make some hot chocolate."

"At two a.m.?" He asked.

"Yes." She answered, popping up from the floor, opening a drawer to grab a spoon and then kicking the cabinet closed with her foot, all in one fluid motion. She turned from him to look in the fridge for the milk.

After it was clear that she wasn't going to elaborate on the reason that she was awake just yet, he changed the subject, "I do have a microwave, you know."

She shook her head as she grabbed the milk and closed the fridge, "It's not the same."

He raised his eyebrows at her as she walked passed him, though she seemed to be trying incredibly hard to not look at him as she grabbed the sauce pan from in front of him.

He scoffed, "You must take your hot chocolate very seriously. That's the least amount I think I've ever heard you say about a subject since I met you."

She shrugged as she clicked the stove on, and she smirked at him over her shoulder, "I never joke about hot chocolate."

"Especially at two in the morning?" He asked.

She turned back to the stove, pouring the milk. Her shoulders tensed slightly, "You seem really hung up on the fact that I'm awake at this time of night, even though we both know that you have no room to talk."

"Well, I'd be less 'hung up' on it, if you'd just tell me why you're up instead of deflecting with comments about not-planets and the finer points of hot chocolate making." He commented, crossing his arms and leaning against the counter on his hip.

She turned, setting the carton of milk on the counter, and pointed the spoon she'd been using to stir the milk at him, glaring mockingly, "Making hot chocolate with milk is an art, Duke Crocker, and I will not have it insulted in my presence."

He raised his hands in mock surrender, "Excuse me, I didn't know I was in the presence of a hot chocolate connoisseur."

"Well you are," she chuckled, "I have it printed on all my business cards, right underneath 'No longer hears voices in her head' and just before 'looking for steady employment',"

She turned back to the milk that was steaming, giving it a few more gentle stirs. The quiet sound of the metal spoon skimming the bottom of the pan filled in the silence that Jennifer tried to create.

"You're not going to make me ask again, are you?" Duke asked carefully, unsure of how to get to the heart of the matter without her shutting down on him completely.

She turned off the stove and sighed. She rubbed her forehead as she turned and leaned against the counter, "No, I won't make you ask again."

She crossed her arms, and stared at the floor in front of her, trying to put together her words. She started to absent-mindedly chew on the corner of her bottom lip.

Duke twitched his head to get the strand of hair that never seemed to manage making it into his pony tail out of his face, and carefully walked into the inlet of the kitchen so that he was opposite Jennifer; not crowding her, but still close enough to reach if she wanted to. If she was aware of his shift in location, she made no obvious acknowledgment of it.

"I…I had a nightmare." She said carefully, looking to a spot just to the left of his feet. He tensed, shifting slightly to try to ground himself, and crossing his arms.

"It wasn't like a horror movie nightmare," she said quickly, mistaking his tension for him thinking it had anything to do with the Guard, or, and she dreaded this more than anything, about him. "There wasn't a…a serial killer, there wasn't any present or imminent danger. It…um, it involved doors."

"Was it…? I mean, did it involve the…?" Duke began, uncertain of how to continue the question, and trying to feign relaxation for Jennifer's benefit. Since Aud-_Lexie_ had come back, Jennifer's Trouble had been dormant, but if something had come back up, they were going to need something stronger than hot chocolate for the next twenty-four hours.

Jennifer shook her head, laughing despite herself, "No, thankfully it was not a barn related, inter-dimensional type door related nightmare. For once it was just your usual run of the mill, subtle terror kind of nightmare. Freud would've been proud of this one."

"You seem really happy about a nightmare that's got you up making hot chocolate at two in the morning." Duke commented, though he smiled, thankful to hear her laugh after she'd been so guarded.

She shrugged and chuckled, "My mom used to say that life was about appreciating the little things, and in a town like Haven, I think appreciating a non-Trouble related nightmare is just the kind of little thing that should be appreciated."

She sighed again, her smile fading, "Hm…"

She rubbed her upper arms before absently giving the milk another stir. As she continued, she opened the cabinet behind her where the mugs were and pulled out her bright yellow, horribly '80's coffee mug. On it was depicted a computer with various spirals and other symbols to demonstrate that it was in some manner of disrepair, along with an exasperated and horribly cartoonish person, yelling _Will someone please shoot the computer?!_ When he had first commented on it, she had just shrugged and told him that it had been her father's. He never said anything about it again.

"I was…I was in this room. It was dark green, like a forest green? with white trim for the baseboards and for the closet doors. And I was talking to a therapist—not one I remember having because if that had been the case I probably would have started panicking earlier; but it was someone who definitely was in a therapist-type of position—who was sitting in front of the closet doors, and I just kept trying to tell them about this…this _evil_, that was with me, and that I needed to stay in the room that we were in, so that what ever it was I had with me couldn't get out."

Duke watched her back, noting the tension in her neck and shoulders, telling him that though her tone was noncommittal, and entirely self-deprecatory, he knew that this nightmare had shaken her.

Deeply.

He wondered, briefly, if she was aware of how easy she was to read.

She pulled a packet of hot chocolate mix from the box she must have placed on the counter before she started this process and set the packet next to the mug, she continued as she carefully poured the milk into the mug, "They didn't listen, of course. Story of my life. So they open the door and suddenly I switch perspectives to the Evil that was with me and I got this flash of this old, sepia photograph, but the focus was solely on the most blurred figure in the image—'cause, you know, being the big evil thing already isn't terrifying and vague enough, let's throw in old photographs and unclear motives while we're at it,"

She set the saucepan back onto the stove, and then ripped open the packet. She poured it into the mug, carefully stirring as she went so she didn't over fill it. She turned back to face Duke as she gave it a few final stirs, "But the figure was apparently the therapist so the evil—or monster, I guess, since saying 'the evil' makes me sound like some senile superhero—the monster, like, burned the photo where the figure's eyes were and that was all it took for it to be transferred to the therapist."

She took a slow sip of her hot chocolate, closing her eyes for a moment. A drop of it clung to her upper lip, and before Duke realized he was looking at her lips, her tongue flicked out and claimed it.

_Hot chocolate is_ not _attractive_, he thought to himself, annoyed that he'd think of _that_ when Jennifer was trying talk to him about her nightmare.

She let out a sigh, staring into her hot chocolate, "Next thing I knew, I was back to the point of view I had started in, back in that green room, with the-now possessed-therapist reading something to me over an intercom system, and doors _every_where. Some locked, some not, but the ones that weren't just opened to another door that was, and no matter how hard I tried, no matter how hard I pounded and _screamed_—and I screamed to the point of near voiceless-ness—there was only one thought that kept playing over—," she began to cycle her right index finger around by her temple as she spoke, "—and over and _over_ again."

She took another drink of her hot chocolate before setting it down and continuing, "'No one hears me. No one cares. I'm never going to get out of this room.'"

"Shit." Duke mumbled, shifting so that his hands now braced him against the counter.

Jennifer smiled mirthlessly, shook her head, and looked up at the ceiling (though Duke still caught the telltale glisten of tears in her eyes), "I mean, I know exactly where all that was coming from. I mean, really, _doors_? That I can't open? _Therapists_? You'd think that my psyche would try something more subtle. I'm almost insulted at how blatant it was."

She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, her smile now desperate, and let out a broken chuckle. After a moment, she let her arms drop to her sides, and looked at him for the first time since trying to will herself back to her room, "So now, I'm going to drink my hot chocolate at two in the morning, try not to let my psyche win this round, and then go back to bed."

She picked up her mug by its rim and walked passed him. Duke went to touch her arm, thought better of it at the last second, and tried to play it off as a thumbs-up. She sat at the breakfast nook with her back to him and the kitchen, holding her forehead in her left hand.

He walked slowly out of the kitchenette, pausing next to her as he debated what his next move should be. Finally he let out a sigh and took the seat opposite her.

"Really, Duke, I'm fine. Go back to—,"

"Why hot chocolate?" He interrupted.

She looked at him, startled, "What?"

"Why hot chocolate? I mean, if _I_ had just woken up from a nightmare that basically touched on every anxiety inducing thing that I'd ever experienced, hot chocolate would _not_ have been my first drink choice. In fact," he said leaning back and smirking, "we probably wouldn't even be having this or really any kind of conversation,"

She paused, scowling at him, before finally just looking at him for a moment before she looked back down into her hot chocolate, "My dad."

She took a drink, seeming to think the conversation was over, but at Duke's raised eyebrows and face of interest, she bowed her head as she tried to surpass a giggle.

"You know, one of my first memories of my dad is him carrying me back to my room. I guess I had fallen asleep in his and Mom's room, and as he was carrying me, I woke up-just for a moment-and registered not only what was happening, but how safe I felt. It…it was warm, y'know? Something that just…_seeped_ into me."

She took a drink, "When I was younger, I used to have a lot of trouble going to sleep, and when I would, more often than not, I'd have nightmares. And because I was little and I was scared, I'd go into my parents' room for help and comfort. The first time it happened, I remember trying to wake up my mom, but she used to be able to sleep through anything." She smiled at her drink, remembering, "Dad used to say that she'd sleep through the end of the world, even if it were happening in their bedroom."

Duke nodded, smirking, though, once again, he doubted Jennifer was paying him any attention.

"So," she sighed, shifting in her seat with her words and keeping her hands around her mug, "my efforts proving useless on Mom, I tentatively turned my attention to my father, who wasn't sure at first what was happening. After a second, he registered, 'Oh, scared daughter,' and moved so that I could climb into bed between him and Mom. He wrapped his arm around me and told me to tell him what happened in my dream."

"That doesn't seem to have anything to do with hot chocolate," Duke pointed out, not trying to be snide, but just trying to get her to give him that look she does when she's exasperated by his shit, but secretly charmed by it.

He succeeded.

"Because it didn't come until later." She replied, mockingly mimicking his tone. He grinned back, and she just scrunched her nose at him, knowing exactly what he did. She took another drink of her hot chocolate, trying to hide her smile.

"As I got older," she continued, "he would take me downstairs and make me a cup of hot chocolate. As he worked, I'd tell him about it. He'd never…he never judged them, or said that they were things that were impossible, or ridiculous. He…he never made me feel as if I, or anything I was afraid of, were any of those things. And there was something calming about watching him work, however briefly, to make the hot chocolate."

Her smile turned sad as she looked back at the mug in her hands, "No matter how hard I've tried, I've never been able to make my hot chocolate so that it tasted like it did in our kitchen, no matter what time of night, after I talked about a nightmare."

"Why'd he make you talk about them?" Duke asked.

She turned her gaze back to him, "To make them…" she stopped, her face scrunching in concentration, "Oh, there's a way to say this right, I know there is. Bear with me for a second."

Duke raised his hands, trying to say that he had nowhere else to be.

"It was to make them…real?" she was looking to her right as she spoke, her face contorting as she tried to get her words right, "Make them real so that they wouldn't be _real_. Does that make sense?"

Duke only paused for a moment, "Believe it or not, yes."

She smirked at him, "For awhile, towards the end of middle school and start of high school, I actually stopped having them. Nightmares, I mean. And then when dad died, they came back full force. I tried everything to calm myself on my own after them, but nothing worked. Not the way hot chocolate had. The first time I made it on my own I…"

She stopped, biting her lip.

"You what?" Duke prompted.

She chewed her lip for a moment longer and then downed what was left of her drink. She shook her head, "Nah, it's silly."

She stood and went to the kitchenette. Again, as she stood, Duke leaned forward and made to grab her hand, to pull her back, and again he thought better of it at the last second. As his arms fell to the table in front of him, he said her name.

She paused in the middle of the kitchenette, facing the wall to the sink, once again avoiding his gaze.

"I don't want you to ever believe that I think that anything about you is 'silly'," He said.

She glanced at him, unsure of what to do or say. Duke sat frozen, unsure of the same things. Finally Jennifer smiled, "Thank you, Duke."

He nodded.

She walked the rest of the way to the sink saying, "But, um, like I was saying, the first time I made it on my own I…I felt my dad there. It was that same feeling of safety that I remembered from when he carried me to bed that first time."

As she grabbed the saucepan from the stove and put it in the sink she sighed as she admitted, "I cried so hard once I felt it that I almost burned the milk. If Mom knew about it—and I wonder how she couldn't've, the smell was _awful_—she never said."

She ran water over the dirty dishes, thinking of letting them sit for the night. She pointed at them briefly, trying to communicate that she'd deal with them the next morning, but Duke just waved her off. She braced herself on the counter and continued, "So, that's why I made hot chocolate at two in the morning. All apart of the post-nightmare self-care."

He nodded, smiling at her. She smiled back and then yawned. She shook herself for a moment, "Wow, that warm milk worked faster than usual."

She started towards the ladder, "Thank you, Duke."

"For what?"

She turned and smiled at him, "For listening. For making the nightmare less real."

She turned back to the ladder and began to climb up it.

"Are you sure you're okay?" He called after her.

She paused, leaning against the ladder a few rungs above the floor, and considered the question for a second. Then she nodded, "Yeah. I'm okay. The nightmare only gets power if I give it, and I'm tired of letting my psyche run the show."

He let a breath through his nose, studying her, before he just smirked and nodded, "Alright."

She started back up the ladder.

Just as her feet became the only thing he could see of her, he called out, "Good night, Jennifer."

There was only a brief pause before the reply came back, "Good night, Duke."


End file.
